Although Beijing is a city of 15 million people there seems to be very little crime here.
Based on my brief experience I'd say the most dangerous place to be here is in a pedestrian crosswalk.
Although the city is heavily policed it seems that no one is assigned to the traffic bureau. And yes, there are plenty of cars here now, some two million of them in fact. Gone are the days when everyone in Beijing got around by bicycle.
Cars rarely yield to other cars and they never yield to pedestrians. Despite the laissez faire enforcement of traffic laws I have yet to see an honest to God fender bender and surprisingly few cars have evidence of dents.
I would have bet that body shop would have been Beijing's growth industry.
There are plenty of taxis here although some of them are quite small by our standards. I'm 6'1" and I thought they were going to have to call for the jaws of life to extricate me from the backseat of one cab.
The smallness of the taxi really rounds out the "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" experience of traveling in a cab.
While we were out and about today we were astonished to find out that Beijing has a Hooters. Allison insisted that we go inside and take a peak. Although China has a lot of doctors after visiting the Beijing Hooters I can say with some confidence that apparently none of them are plastic surgeons.
This will be my last blog post from China. We are flying home Sunday in order to be back in time for Christmas.
Although I won't be writing anymore from here I will keep uploading new pictures to the photo blog over at <http://www.flickr.com/photos/craigsmithsblog/
>
There's a photo of me reading a Chinese newspaper. Since I can't read Chinese I was restricted to looking at the big pretty pictures. Not at all unlike reading the News-Press.
Allison got pretty excited when I pointed out that the photo of her was by far the one that had been viewed the most. She suggested that perhaps I ought to consider posting some more pictures of her. I had to sit her down and have a little talk about how this was Craig Smith's Blog and not Allison's.
Return to top of page
E-Mail Me 
Print This Page
